


Running From the Truth

by Enigmaris



Series: Ectober 2019 [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Danny is so Afraid, Fear, Tarot, post-accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 00:43:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21188720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigmaris/pseuds/Enigmaris
Summary: Ectober 2019 Day 2Prompt: Tarot/ StalkerSomething rolled under his skin.A thousand bugs crawling in the space between his skin and his muscles, squirming between nerves and veins.He had to fight the urge to scratch and slap at his own body to stop the sensations. He knew it wouldn’t do anything, not really. This had started only a week ago, after that day, and nothing would make it stop. Nothing.





	Running From the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> It's Day 2!! Yes I'm apparently sticking with this lol.

Something rolled under his skin.

A thousand bugs crawling in the space between his skin and his muscles, squirming between nerves and veins.

He had to fight the urge to scratch and slap at his own body to stop the sensations. He knew it wouldn’t do anything, not really. This had started only a week ago, after _that day_, and nothing would make it stop. Nothing.

Nails dug along his arms and he flinched when he drew blood.

“Danny?” Sam asked, her voice foggy. “Are you okay?”

“What? Fine. I’m _fine_.”

His friend didn’t look convinced. Her worried stare felt like knife wounds in his skin. The itching, the burning continued in his lungs.

Nothing felt _right_.

“School starts next week.” She said. “Do you want to come with me and Tucker to the Fall Fair? I heard there was going to be some witches there.”

Danny had a feeling she’d already brought this up, based on her tone. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Instead he nodded and roughly stuffed his hands into his jean pockets. The sensation of pressure near his hips sent painful skitters down his thighs and he almost crumpled. Instead he gave Sam a smile.

“Sure? How about we go after lunch? Dad wants me to help him in the lab.”

“Are you sure you should be…going down there?” Sam asked, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. Danny flinched before she could touch him. Guilt flashed through her eyes and Danny looked away. He hunched his shoulders up, wishing that he’d thought to wear a hoodie. He felt exposed, naked, and that the whole world could see the burning thing that was eating him from the inside out.

“I’m fine.” Danny growled. “I’ll see you and Tuck there.”

He left before they could actually make solid plans. He couldn’t talk to her anymore. He couldn’t talk to anyone, not right then and maybe not ever again. He rushed away from Sam, away from the Nasty Burger where Sam had asked him to meet up. Neither Sam or Tucker had wanted to go back to his house since that day. Danny didn’t even like being there anymore.

But nowhere felt comfortable.

It was like he was being stalked. Hunted. His friends were following him everywhere, popping around corners and peeping over fences. Waiting for him to fall apart. To admit that he was anything other than fine. Paranoia prickled his skin and the bugs beneath feasted on it. Danny just wanted to be alone but nowhere felt alone. When it wasn’t Sam. It was Tucker. When it wasn’t Tucker it was the pain, the boiling, writhing pain he didn’t understand.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip his skin off and use a flashlight to find the source of the itching. He wanted to scratch at the earth beneath his feet until his fingers were bloody and raw and he had a hole he could crawl into. He wanted to hide.

He _needed_ to hide.

Heat. A thousand acidic stabs starting from his chest and moving out. He was burning, _melting_. Danny coughed violently, hunching over till his body resembled a screwy question mark. He stumbled, he fell forward into an alley, his knees slammed onto the asphalt and into a puddle of something. His lungs continued to heave, to violently protest the idea that they had to function. He couldn’t _breathe_.

He continued to fall forward in slow motion. One hand gave out and he collapsed onto his elbows, rocks and glass digging into the skin there. Another round of coughs pushed him even further to the ground until he finally collapsed, shaken and weak unable to even hold his head up. He laid there, defeated; barely covered in the shadows between two buildings. The coughing continued, his throat burning now from the strain and tears running from his eyes.

_This was it. _

_He was going to die._

He’d suspected that it would happen. Ever since that day in the lab, with the portal that was now functional. Ever since he’d had a moment of bright hair and alien eyes, ever since Tucker and Sam had stopped looking at him like he was normal, but instead someone to be wary of. The guilt Sam carried around was the final nail in the coffin. She knew what was happening to him.

Slowly Danny pushed himself up, some feral part of him refused to die out in the open. He needed to be alone. He crawled along, heedless of the cuts he was now getting on his palms until he got behind a dumpster. He collapsed next to the slimy metal with a crash, his lungs still coughing terribly.

He let his eyes slip shut.

_It was time._

He only hoped…

He didn’t become…

The pain stopped abruptly, a tingling sensation washed over him starting at his waist and traveling up. The coughing eased and his throat felt less sore. Strange. He’d always thought death had a light at the end of a tunnel. But Danny couldn’t see any light. After a few moments of silence, pain free silence, Danny forced his eyes open. The alleyway looked exactly the same. Still smelt of rotten food and tepid, standing water. Nothing had changed.

Except. Wait.

Danny reached up and placed a hand on his chest. There was nothing there, no warmth, no heart beat. His lungs moved up and down taking air into his chest but there was no pleasure in the action, just a strange sense of habit. Slowly Danny lifted up a hand and saw that he was now wearing gloves.

He slammed his hands back down and bit back a scream. No. No. No. It couldn’t be. Those were the gloves he’d worn that day. He couldn’t be wearing those now. Didn’t ghosts wear the thing they died in…

Fear quickly took the place of the itching, burning pain Danny had been suffering under for days. He didn’t know how to experience fear without a rushing heart or a sweaty body, but he managed it. He curled up tightly, into a little ball, wearing a Fenton safety suit, and tried to forget what he now knew. He was _dead_. He’d become the monster his parents hunted. They would stalk him every day and night until they had him and no one but Sam and Tucker would ever know what he used to be.

He had to get away. Away. He pushed himself up, the smooth rubber of his suit catching along the brick wall behind him. He needed to go. To leave. To never look back. Once he was standing, feeling strangely buoyant on the ground. He started to run. His fear pushed him into the middle of the empty street and away from town, away from his parents, away from Sam. Away from everything.

He kept running, pushing himself so hard he didn’t notice when his feet stopped touching the ground. He didn’t notice when his head became level with the trees, and then with the buildings. All he knew was the command, the need to go, to get as far away from the danger as he could. Even if the danger was himself. He didn’t realize how fast he was going, how high he was, until he was outside of town and below him there was nothing but a pencil thin strip of highway.

The shock of seeing bug size cars, gleaming in the sun, took the breath out of his lungs, breath he no longer needed.

He fell.

Air whipped around him, the wind pushing his denseless body around like ash. The scream he’d let free was torn from his throat so quickly he couldn’t even hear it. He could only feel it’s agony.

He crashed.

When he woke up, it was to the sensation of being poked with a steel toed boot. He groaned, wondering why he felt so much pain.

“Hey boy! Get up out of there. Someone’ll think you’re dead.”

Eyes snapped open, eyes that were brilliantly miraculously blue. Memories and knowledge returned, and Danny sat up, ready to run again. The first thing he saw was his blue jeans, now stained with dried brown blood and mud. The next thing he saw was a woman wearing a dress so black that it would make Sam jealous. He was sitting in a crater, large enough to match the size of a falling body.

“What?”

“Yeah I don’t know where you came from.” She said, her voice was thick and had a drawl that Danny had only heard on television shows about people who hunted alligators. “But you best be getting out of there boy.”

“I…uhm…” He didn’t understand. Nothing made sense. The woman looked at him, her face glinted like obsidian in the harsh afternoon sunlight. She tsked and then grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

“Alright get up.” She said hauling him out of the hole he’d created. He could see now that he’d landed outside the Fall Fair. There were colorful tents placed around and a Ferris Wheel was being set up. Danny scrambled to get to his feet but the older woman kept a hand on his shirt anyway dragging him towards where he assumed her tent was. “Don’t normally do this but you don’t look right in the head boy.”

“Where are you taking me?” Danny asked, even as she dragged him almost roughly inside a tent.

The tent was dark inside, lit up only by a few lamps that cast strange shadows over everything. There were tables along the sides that were filled with odd things, crystals and glass spheres and dried herbs. It was the kind of tent Sam would have dragged both Tucker and Danny into and remained inside of for hours, no matter how strong the smells inside here.

“Sit down.” She said while pushing Danny into a chair. “I came outside because I sensed somethin’, and I found you laying in a hole looking like an alien. You’re not an alien, are ya?”

“Uhm. No?”

“Hmm.” She narrowed her golden eyes at him. “You need somethin’ then?”

“I was just trying to get away.” Danny answered, unable to explain from _what_. Had it all been a dream?

“Well. Before you go running off, best sit down and let me do a reading.”

“A reading?” She didn’t answer as she reached out and grabbed a stack of cards from beneath the table they were sitting between. It was a round table covered in a thick purple velvet cloth. Danny watched as she played around with the cards for a moment. “I don’t have any money.”

“Boys who fall out of the sky don’t pay.” She said sternly. “Now, draw three.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Take ‘em.”

He reached out and snatched three cards from the middle. Almost taking five more alongside with it. She glared at him for the rough treatment of her cards but took the three he’d chosen anyway. She laid out the first card in front of him. It was a man, hanging upside down from a tree, his leg tied to a branch.

“The hanging man.” She said as if Danny had any idea what that meant.

Next, she placed down a card that had a tower that had just been struck by a huge bolt of lightning, it was on fire and people were falling out of it, screams on their burnt faces. Fear twisted in Danny’s gut as he stared at the falling people. He refused to even look at the chipped nails of the woman who’d put the card down.

“The Tower.”

The final card came next. A skeleton in a pitch black cloak riding on a white horse. People falling before it on their knees, fear painted on their faces.

“And this is De-”

Danny shot up from his seat, sending the wooden chair clattering to the ground. The woman reached out and grabbed his hand, but Danny’s entire arm turned translucent and he pulled free as if he were made of air. The woman’s jaw dropped, and Danny made a pained noise.

“I…I…”

But he didn’t know what to say.

He ran instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Side note: I know very little about tarot and I hope google didn't lead me wrong on this one. That being said none of the cards Danny picked, as far as I know, represent bad things. The mostly represent change and remaking yourself, a transformation as it were.


End file.
